iPad Evaluation

The iPads were overall very useful to have in the classroom. Note taking has never been a strong suit of mine, as I am quite slow at writing by hand, but that was never a problem with the iPad. It was quick and easy to take notes, and to save them somewhere where they are easily accessable from home or other days in class. Organization becomes much easier with the iPad, and you never have to worry about losing loose sheets of paper that may be very important to your grade. The easy access to the Internet makes research easier, and provides a quick way to gain information that the teacher can't help with immediately. That includes definitions to unfamiliar words, meanings behind quotations that I may not understand, and access to further, related readings. The iPads were a great way for each student in the class to connect to each other with their writing. Also, class presentations could be much more interesting, since there was a possibility for each student to connect directly to the presenters through the use of the iPad. The iPads also provided more individuality in class, as any other skills you had could be incorporated where they normally couldn't. This includes any artistic skills that a student may have. Overall, the iPads were a great addition to the classroom.  The iPad keyboard is so much different than desktop or laptop keyboard, which makes it somewhat difficult to type. This isnt a major problem though, as it doesn't limit major iPad uses, and still allows for notes to be taken more quickly than on paper, but it does take a while to get used to. Since there is no undo button, any misspellings or accidental deletions of work can be really hard. Also, the fact that we are limited to iPad use in class only makes it much more difficult to manage our work. True, we can save it on sites that are accessable from home, but it isn't as good as being able to take iPads home. Also, sharing iPads in class had quite a few struggles. You always had to make sure you weren't logged in to anything before puttin the iPad back in the cart. Also, anything you were working on had to be saved online, and doing that in combination with logging out meant that you wouldn't be able to work to the end of the class period.  I think that the school should move to a 1:1 environment where all high school students would have access to an iPad. This is the better option, because it would be easier for students to take notes directly on the notes app without having to worry about connecting to the Internet or sending themselves an email. In addition I would have really liked to have had the chance to use the iPad in multiple classes, since its use as a multi-class notebook would be very beneficial. Taking huge, heavy binders and textbooks home would no longer be a problem as well. By having your own iPad, you would no longer have to worry about making sure to log out of everything so other students can't access your accounts. There would also not be any fear of others deleting your pictures or notes from the iPad itself.  So there wouldnt be a problem if you didn't have time to save them somewhere accessible from home. Also, though expensive, the iPads would cut down on school expenses along the way. The school could try to go paperless, and there would no longer be a need for buying expensive textbooks for students. Moving to a 1:1 iPad environment would be very beneficial to the school.

Evernote Evaluation

Evernote was a great tool to have in the classroom. When it comes to saving your work in an easily-accessible space, this was definitely the best app to use. The layout of the notes was great, and very easy to understand and use. It was very convenient to have Evernote to use, since it made notetaking much easier in class. You could type right on the app, and save it from there, rather than have to worry about sending it to yourself at the end of class. I also liked how it had a picture function, that way if I wanted to take pictures of important passages from the book, or of notes that I had handwritten , I could do that easily. The site was easy to type on, and I use it at home and on my phone as well, and I am just as satisfied with its uses on those devices. Overall, I really liked having Evernote, and I think our school should continue using that in combination with the iPads as a source of note-taking.   I didn’t like that Evernote sometimes lagged while you typed, since it made it difficult to know when you had made a mistake or not. Also, the autocorrect with things like capitalizations and periods, and simple spelling mistakes is all but nonexistent. This makes taking notes a bit more challenging since you would constantly have to keep going back to fix mistakes that you normally wouldn’t have made on a keyboard. Also, the formatting within the posting itself was difficult to use. I wasn’t aware that there was even a tab button present until the second to last day of school, when someone finally figured it out. Also, the size of the letters is usually very small, and it isn’t very easy to readjust it. I’d have liked for the formatting to be a bit more like a word document, where everything is laid out well, and there are many different options for organization. Despite all of these drawbacks, I still really felt that the use of Evernote was key to note-taking, and helped a lot in the classroom and at home.   I don’t have any major suggestions about how Evernote could be better. The only things I would say could be changed are the formatting and layout. I had trouble formatting my notes, and as I am a very visually-based person, I really like being able to use tabs and bullet points and different font sizes and things like that. Those functions were a bit difficult to use with Evernote on the iPad. Also, there could be more visual options, such as graphs and charts. That could help with overall organization, and it would especially help in the use of other classes besides English, like a math or a science class. Other than that, I think Evernot is a great app, and doesn’t have any major problems. I really liked having it to use in the classroom, and I thought that it provided major, necessary help to note-taking in class. I wish we could have gotten started with Evernote from the very beginning, rather than halfway through the year, because it really helped out.